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Date:      Thu, 4 Feb 1999 08:34:24 +1100
From:      Peter Jeremy <peter.jeremy@auss2.alcatel.com.au>
To:        myke@ees.com
Cc:        freebsd-stable@FreeBSD.ORG
Subject:   Re: 3.0-19990202-SNAP a.out problem
Message-ID:  <99Feb4.082430est.40390@border.alcanet.com.au>

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Mike Holling <myke@ees.com> wrote:
>> a.out will be gone from FreeBSD as of 3.1, and is disabled by default in
>> 3.0.  This would be fine except for the 3rd party a.out binaries...like
>> Netscape.  One hopes Netscape will switch to ELF before a.out is gone
>> (hah).
>
>I suspect that this decision will be reversed, or a huge majority of the
>-stable crowd will stick with 2.2.8 forever.  It's pretty unlikely that
>everything can be recompiled for ELF that quickly.

The initial statement was referring to _development_tools_ only:  3.1
(and later) will lose the capability to build a.out executables.  The
kernel will still be able to execute pre-existing a.out executables
(assuming you have installed the shared libraries which are part of the
2.x compatibility package).

The only problem area in the transition is 3rd-party libraries (eg
Motif).  To link and/or execute a new application, you'll need an ELF
version of the library.  (But you'll still need an a.out shared lib
for an a.out executable).

a.out executables _will_ be supported for the foreseeable future.  (And
it's worthwhile noting that recent 2.x kernels can execute ELF binaries
(at least 2.2.7 does)).

Peter

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